This week’s National Climate Seminar speaker: Dr. Michael Mann
Wednesday at noon eastern, please join Dr. Michael Mann on The National Climate Seminar. Director of Earth Systems Science at Penn State, Mann is best known for his reconstruction of global temperatures over the last thousand years, the so-called “hockey stick.” His work has been subject to much scientific scrutiny, holding up to intense criticism and re-examination. Mann’s subject for Wednesday is “Beyond the Hockey Stick: The Latest in Climate Science.” The talk will build on the report Mann helped produce prior to the Copenhagen meetings last December. Please send advance questions to Dr. Mann to climate@bard.edu.
Call-In: 712-432-3100, Conference Code: 253385
Mann can also speak knowledgably about communicating science (he is one of the founders of realclimate.org, and wrote Dire Predictions, the layman’s guide to the 2007 IPCC report), and also the political pressures facing climate scientists these days. After private e-mails were hacked at the University of East Anglia, one sentence in one of Mann’s emails was taken out of context, and splashed across newspapers around the globe. Political pressure then led to two separate investigations of Mann’s scientific processes, in which he was thoroughly cleared of any wrongdoing. The Attorney General of Virginia is currently pursuing a law suit against Mann that the Washington Post has condemned as “a fishing expedition designed to intimidate and suppress honest research.”
For all the teachers on the list, we are still seeking participation in a fun and easy project. C2C is organizing a series of campus-to-corporation conversations on climate. We will send the letter below to Burger King (and other companies) requesting the opportunity. Would you be willing to sign on to the invitation letter, and if the call comes to fruition, assign it as homework to students in one of your classes? (Calls will be recorded, so the students don’t even have to listen live, though that would be the best).
These will not be confrontational calls. In fact, we view them as designed to strengthen the hand of the sustainability officers to whom we talk. Imagine: they can say to their CEO’s– I just got off the phone with 500 college and high school students, and they are wondering why we aren’t doing more on climate! Your help would be much appreciated. We already have more 30 professors signed on, but with 50+, it will be very hard to turn us down. We anticipate holding calls this fall and spring, so it doesn’t matter which term you are teaching in.
Please respond with a YES! to me, and include your title/department.
Later in the term on The National Climate Seminar: economist Juliet Schor and Time Magazine reporter Bryan Walsh.
Thanks for the work you are doing.
Eban Goodstein
Director, Bard Center for Environmental Policy